Page 70 of Academy of the Wicked: Year Three

And what happens when someone holds keys to both?

I look at Gwenievere, small and exhausted in Atticus’ arms, and wonder if she's the answer to questions we haven't learned to ask yet. If her journey through Wicked Academy as a female—unprecedented, impossible, forbidden—is actually preparation for something else entirely.

The heir earning her rightful crown.

But which crown? To which throne?

And at what cost?

The water behind us is calm now, returned to its mirror-like stillness. But I know what lurks beneath—gates and guardians and a woman named Iris who knows names that should be secret.

"Let's go," I say, though the words feel like ending one chapter and beginning another. "The Academy waits."

As we gather ourselves, I catch my reflection in the still water. Nikki looks back—wet, exhausted, but alive. And for the first time since arriving in these hostile realms, I don't immediately want to shift back to Nikolai.

These waters recognized something in this form worth saving.

Iris called me by a name that belongs to her alone.

And saving Gwenievere as Nikki felt more right than anything I've done as Nikolai.

The mark on my chest pulses with warmth—not painful but present.Reminder of connection that transcends form or realm or even understanding.

Nikkiatia Luminaris Starweaver.

The name echoes in my mind like promise and threat combined.

As we turn toward the path to what we hope will be the Academy Gates for Year Three that's been our goal, I can't help but wonder:

Are we walking toward ending or beginning?

Only time will tell.

But time, as I've learned in waters that exist outside of it, isn't always what it seems.

The Seer In My Dreams

~GWENIEVERE~

Sleep takes me like sinking into warm honey—slow, thick, inevitable.

Someone carries me. The shoulder beneath my cheek is steady, the gait rhythmic enough to lull consciousness into something softer. I don't know whose—the scent could be Cassius's shadows or Atticus's copper-blood or even Mortimer's dragon-smoke. In this state between waking and sleeping, identity matters less than the safety of being held.

My child-body weighs nothing to whoever bears me, and there's comfort in that. In being small enough to be carried, protected, removed from the requirement of constant vigilance. The voices around me blur into meaningless sound—concern and planning and debate about keys and academies and waters that shouldn't exist.

But I'm already elsewhere.

The dream doesn't arrive—I arrive in it. One moment I'm bobbing with each step of my carrier, the next I stand in a space that exists outside conventional dimensions.

It's not dark or light here. Not warm or cold. The environment simplyis, neutral in a way that suggests it's waiting to be defined by whoever occupies it. Mist that isn't quite mistdrifts at the edges of perception, forming shapes that dissolve before recognition can solidify.

She stands before me, and I know immediately this is more than dream.

The woman from the water—her white hair flows with the same impossible motion, defying gravity that doesn't exist here anyway. Those blue eyes that shift between teal and turquoise study me with interest that feels academic rather than personal. Her plum-magenta lips curve in a smile that manages to be both welcoming and mysterious.

"Who are you?" I ask, though part of me already knows.

My voice sounds strange here—not quite child-pitch but not adult either. As if this space can't decide which version of me stands before her, so it averages the difference.